Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Y Trocados Quedaban Guatiaos, Que Era Tanto Coma
Confederados Y Hermanos En Armas.
Ponce de Leon se hace guatiao con el
poderoso cacique Agueinaha." Herrera dec.
1 pages 129, 159 and 181.
[Juan de Esquivel (1502) became the guatiao of the cacique Cotubanama;
and thenceforth the latter called himself Juan de Esquivel, for among
the Indians the exchange of names was a bond of perpetual friendship.
Those who exchanged names became guaitaos, which meant the same as
confederates or brethren-in-arms. Ponce de Leon became guatiao with
the powerful cacique Agueinaha.] One of the Lucayes Islands, inhabited
by a mild and pacific people, was heretofore called Guatao; but we
will not insist on the etymology of this word, because the languages
of the Lucayes Islands differed from those of Hayti.) The ethnographic
document called El Auto de Figueroa is one of the most curious records
of the barbarism of the first conquistadores. Without any attention to
the analogy of languages, every nation that could be accused of having
devoured a prisoner after a battle was arbitrarily declared of Carib
race. The inhabitants of Uriapari (on the peninsula of Paria) were
named Caribs; the Urinacos (settled on the banks of the Lower Orinoco,
or Urinucu), Guatiaos. All the tribes designated by Figueroa as Caribs
were condemned to slavery; and might at will be sold, or exterminated
by war. In these sanguinary struggles, the Carib women, after the
death of their husbands, defended themselves with such desperation
that Anghiera says they were taken for tribes of Amazons. But amidst
the cruelties exercised on the Caribs, it is consolatory to find, that
there existed some courageous men who raised the voice of humanity and
justice. Some of the monks embraced an opinion different from that
which they had at first adopted. In an age when there could be no hope
of founding public liberty on civil institutions, an attempt was at
least made to defend individual liberty. "That is a most holy law (ley
sanctissima)," says Gomara, in 1551, "by which our emperor has
prohibited the reducing of the Indians to slavery. It is just that
men, who are all born free, should not become the slaves of one
another."
During our abode in the Carib missions, we observed with surprise the
facility with which young Indians of eighteen years of age, when
appointed to the post of alguazil, would harangue the municipality for
whole hours in succession. Their tone of voice, their gravity of
deportment, the gestures which accompanied their speech, all denoted
an intelligent people capable of a high degree of civilization. A
Franciscan monk, who knew enough of the Carib language to preach in it
occasionally, pointed out to us that the long and harmonious periods
which occur in the discourses of the Indians are never confused or
obscure. Particular inflexions of the verb indicate beforehand the
nature of the object, whether it be animate or inanimate, singular or
plural. Little annexed forms (suffixes) mark the gradations of
sentiment; and here, as in every language formed by a free
development, clearness is the result of that regulating instinct which
characterises human intelligence in the various stages of barbarism
and cultivation.
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